Jaguar Land Rover is the largest investor in R&D in the UK manufacturing sector and has already invested $15.7 billion in the last five years

Highlights

Jaguar Land Rover might adopt these aero packs in future products

The application is complex but the ideas are simple

JLR wants to channel air across the body to make cars more efficient

Automakers have a lot to think about now-a-days, making autonomous technology, building safer cars and of course making it look good. Aerodynamics too plays a major role and Jaguar Land Rover is taking note of this. The future vehicles coming out of the JLR stable could turn out to be more aerodynamic and the new patent shows the company’s plans for an extensive collection of tricks for channeling air around the side of the body. It’s clear from these patents that JLR want the body of the car to produce less drag and this will ultimately lead to better fuel efficiency.

In these patent drawings, you can see how the vehicle sees deployable vanes up front. When not in use, the strakes would be flush with the vehicle’s body, but they would extend on the road to clean up the airflow ahead of the front wheel. The devices could also rotate for fine-tuning the aero adjustments.
The body also sees active extending side sills. These would help channel air inward towards a rear diffuser, if the particular vehicle actually has one.

These sills would also act help make ingress and egress a breeze. Then there is the D-pillar which could be partially hollow and feature vanes inside and these parts could be fixed or adjustable. The air would be channelled inward and change the shape of the rear of the vehicle, thus reducing the aerodynamic drag.

While these tricks might sound simple, they are indeed difficult to implement, but having patented these technologies, we might soon see them being used in production cars, which will make things even more interesting. Jaguar Land Rover is the largest investor in R&D in the UK manufacturing sector and has already invested $15.7 billion in the last five years and in the current year alone will spend over USD$4.5 billion on new product creation and capital expenditure. We are just happy to see the money put to good use.